The History Boys launched the careers of several fine young actors, and Simon Stephens's contemporary school drama, which takes place in the library of an independent school, has already done wonders for Tom Sturridge. There will be no justice if it doesn't do the same for several of the actors in this recast version of an edgy, jangled play that delivers the news that the kids are not all right.
Rupert Simonian is unsettlingly compelling as William, a bright sixth-form lad among a group of bright kids, many Oxbridge-bound, who befriends newcomer Lily (Laura Pyper) whose self-contained exterior hides darker secrets. Looked at too closely, the details of Stephens's school setting don't quite convince: just as the History Boys was supposed to be set in the 1980s and actually felt like the 1950s, so Punk Rock is supposed to take place now but feels like the early 90s.
But it really doesn't matter, because like the unworldly gothic library of Paul Wills's design, the world Stephens created is as hermetically sealed as the island in Lord of the Flies. Indeed, Edward Franklin's Bennett Francis, with his vicious bullying slang, self-consciously parodies a long line of schoolboy rotters. There is something of the laboratory in this library where the books lie dusty and unborrowed, while exams are swotted for and where the intellectual and social posturing hides insecurities and self harm.
Stephens builds the tension expertly, and Sarah Frankcom's production with its discordant musical interludes that feel like musical electro-convulsive therapy brings the whole thing to the boil. There's nowhere for anyone to hide, not the broken kids or the parents, teachers and politicians who constructed this absurd, anxious world.
